The reason for going monoligual was obvious to me when comparing how I learnt english with my current learning of japanese… I dodged spanish (L1) resources the minute I was able to, in turn for more english content. So japanese seemed like the same, though this time probably I’m much more aware of the whole process.
I read Jalup website and tried to go monoligual after some 6 months in japanese… no surprise, went bad… the reason was clear, I had a bit over 1K words under my belt by then, and reading a dictionary wasn’t any easier than any other native text.
6 months later, I had almost 4K words matured in Anki, and I was reading stories aimed at japanese kids (early 小学 level still), so I revised those dictionaries… and voila!!! The blurriness was gone!!
Between the two attemps I read all the graded series I could get, then started the series for japanese kids and all the time I’ve been doing a somewhat unorthodox sentence mining routine.
For resources I also considered this guy:
With the whole sentence bank system, having audio, subs lines and images it’s a real aid when creting cards, and specially for getting aquainted with the vocab with real usage.
Anyway, reading a lot and adding constantly more vocab is the main thing I can think has made a sustantial difference in my case… that and the whole establishing a routine and stop seeking the golden goose for japanese learning.
Keeping a journal also helps 
@Roranlee by the way, what about audio, shows? what kind of resources are you using… I’m kinda repeating myself a ton over the shows that I’ve watched before in order to be able to watch them without any subs now… 
… what’s your take on that?